Are You a Beginning Pitcher Who Desires the Platoon Benefit? Too Unhealthy!

I used to be considering Astros right-hander Hunter Brown the opposite day — I think about it is a subject lots of you ponder often as effectively — and after I checked out his Baseball Savant web page, I discovered myself a little bit nonplussed:

Brown is a kind of pitchers who throws three fastballs; his thrilling midseason turnaround owes a lot to the addition of a sinker. However wow, he’s thrown numerous fastballs to left-handed hitters, hasn’t he?

It’s not as skewed because it seems; with regards to fastballs, Brown has a particular pitch for hitters on the fitting facet of the plate. (Should you hear a thumping sound, ignore it. It’s the late CIA director Allen Dulles, pounding on the lid of his coffin as a result of he heard “particular pitch for the fitting” and has been introduced again from the lifeless by sheer power of FOMO.) Brown has thrown about as many fastballs complete to every type of hitter.

However even that’s a little bit odd. Relating to the platoon splits for main leaguers, the rule of thumb I take advantage of is two-thirds right-handed, one-third left-handed. You’ll have observed me utilizing that quantity heuristically in my evaluation right here. It’s not, nevertheless, a exact illustration of the most important league inhabitants.

To be clear, Brown is a little bit of an outlier. Via Monday’s video games, there have been 321 pitchers who had thrown 750 or extra pitches within the majors this yr. Brown had thrown the ninth-highest share of these pitches (56.8%) to left-handed batters. In reality, his teammate, Spencer Arrighetti, was no. 2, so perhaps there’s one thing in regards to the Astros that draws left-handed hitters.

Up to now this season, beginning pitchers have been answerable for greater than 88,000 main league plate appearances. Primarily based on pitcher throwing hand and batter hitting facet, right here’s how these plate appearances have been distributed:

So yeah, seems the median right-handed starter truly faces barely extra left-handed hitters than right-handed. And it’s not a 2-to-1 break up; it’s virtually 3-to-1 for pitchers. For hitters, it’s extra even — 57.6% to 42.4% — due to switch-hitters, and youngsters who grew up with overly bold dad and mom who turned them into bats-left-throws-right guys as a result of that’s probably the most advantageous mixture for a serious league participant. (This being the unhappy interregnum between the most important league careers of Pat Venditte and Jurrangelo Cijntje, there are not any switch-pitchers within the huge leagues in the intervening time.)

However between switch-hitters, platoons, stacking the lineup with righties towards powerful lefties, and so forth, the web final result is that more often than not, no person has the platoon benefit.

Nicely, no person besides left-handed hitters:

There are such a lot of right-handed folks in baseball that right-handed hitters are working towards same-handed pitchers… OK, that is virtually precisely 2-to-1, it seems. However there are sufficient switch-hitters and left-handed hitters within the sport that opposing managers can simply barely recover from the hump towards right-handed starters.

I’d present you a desk of the pitchers who function with out the platoon benefit most continuously, but it surely’s principally congruent with a listing of left-handed pitchers. The primary 62 pitchers on the listing are left-handed, adopted by Gerrit Cole, then 11 extra lefties, then Arrighetti.

However the pitcher who faces the fewest lefties of anybody in baseball is Tarik Skubal. Garrett Crochet is fourth-lowest, adopted by Chris Sale. Framber Valdez, Blake Snell, Ranger Suárez, and Cole Ragans are within the prime 15. These are a number of the greatest left-handed starters in baseball. But additionally within the prime 15? Kyle Freeland, Patrick Sandoval, and Jordan Montgomery.

So when managers take all of the lefties out of the lineup towards a left-handed starter, is it as a result of the starter kills left-handed hitters and each out is valuable? Or is it as a result of anybody can hit this joker, so it is a gentle goal for the right-handed part-time gamers who want a gentle goal?

It’s a little bit of each.

On the whole, the pitchers who face probably the most left-handed hitters are lefty relievers, who function with the platoon benefit twice as typically as starters. The LOOGY could also be an artifact of days passed by, however the LTOGY (“litoogie” or “Lieutenant Ogy”) appears to be going robust despite the three-batter minimal. Let’s zero again in on starters.

League-wide this season, left-handed pitchers have confronted left-handed batters 27.9% of the time and surrendered a wOBA of .294 towards them. Proper-handed pitchers have confronted lefties 48.2% of the time and have allowed a wOBA of .320. At first of the sport, the offense has the benefit of realizing who it’s going to be going through: The opposing starter, and which hand he throws with, is understood hours upfront of the sport, normally days. However as soon as the sport begins and relievers enter the image, the data benefit swings again to the protection; when a supervisor makes a pitching change, he is aware of which three batters his reliever goes to face, and with brief benches, the offense has little if any alternative to make a countermove. This is the reason lefty relievers have the platoon benefit twice as typically as lefty starters do.

Consequently, the left-handed pitchers who’ve probably the most disproportionately lefty-heavy workloads are virtually all high-volume relievers. So let’s zoom again out and deal with beginning pitchers for a second.

This yr, the common left-handed starter has thrown 20.6% of his pitches to left-handed hitters. The common right-handed starter has thrown 51.1% of his pitches to left-handed hitters. Listed here are the pitchers who, having been used predominantly out of the rotation this season, have confronted probably the most disproportionately left-handed opponents, controlling for pitcher throwing hand:

It’s a combination. You’ve bought some killer right-handed starters in there, however this group is a hodgepodge of fine pitchers and innings eaters, and it’s a coin flip whether or not a pitcher on this listing is definitely higher towards righties than lefties.

Flipping the listing upside-down, to the starters who face probably the most disproportionately right-handed lineups, is a little bit completely different:

Most of those pitchers truly do pitch left-handed hitters fairly effectively. Musgrove and Woods Richardson, as an illustration, have reverse splits. Skubal is nails towards everybody, however his opponent wOBA is 35 factors higher towards lefties than righties. Freeland has been horrendous general, however he’s been virtually common whenever you isolate the pattern to same-handed batters. (Turnbull and Ortiz have break up their seasons between the rotation and the bullpen, however I included them right here simply because.)

Taking part in matchups within the beginning lineup is under no circumstances an actual science; in some circumstances, the platoon benefit doesn’t make the highest 5 most vital execs or cons for enjoying or sitting a selected hitter. However Brown, relentlessly chucking four-seamers previous one left-handed hitter after one other, is just not as a lot of an outlier as I’d initially thought.